To ask Her Majesty's Government how much they spent on (1) defence, and (2) international aid, in each of the last five years; and and in each case what that spending represented as a proportion of GDP for each such year.
Answered on
16 July 2018
Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2018’ is an annual HM Treasury publication on public spending. It is due to be released on 19 July 2018. The collection can be found at the link below:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/public-expenditure-statistical-analyses-pesa
Table 5.2 will include the latest information on public sector service spend on all functions of government on a consistent and comparable basis. This presentation follows the UN defined Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG). This split includes defence and foreign economic aid expenditure for each of the last five years. GDP figures will also be available in annex F of the same publication.
It is important to note defence and foreign economic aid are also evaluated against alternative internationally agreed classifications.
Official Development Assistance (ODA) is the internationally-agreed classification of foreign aid financing and is measured in accordance with international standards agreed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The UN COFOG measure of Foreign economic aid presented in this table is quite different from the UK ODA measure and therefore not comparable. For example the UK ODA measure include financial transactions such a loans, whereas the UN COFOG measure does not. Also, the UK ODA analysis is on a calendar year rather than financial year basis. A link to the latest ODA releases is provided here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-on-international-development
The 2015 Spending Review continued the commitment to meet the NATO investment pledge to spend 2% of GDP on Defence for the rest of this decade. This is evaluated using the NATO definitions of Defence spending rather than the UN COFOG definitions that are used in this table. The UN COFOG and NATO measures of Defence use different definitions and are therefore not comparable. For example, the NATO Defence figures include pensions whereas in COFOG these are included in Social Protection. Details and figures on NATO Defence expenditures can be found at the following link:
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2017_06/20170629_170629-pr2017-111-en.pdf